Friday, April 25, 2014

Center for Ray Bradbury Studies

What with posting here on Bradburymedia and posting on Facebook, and bits and pieces for various other websites I contribute to, it's easy to lose track of what information I have posted where. Yesterday I realised I hadn't posted anything here about my latest visit to the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies, Indianapolis. I spent three weeks there during March/April, and could have done with three or four more.

This is what I wrote about my visit on my Facebook page. Apologies if this seems familiar (especially to anyone reading this blog post on Facebook, who may have already seen this before...):

----------------------------------Just
finishing up after three weeks spent at the Center for Ray Bradbury
Studies in Indianapolis. For the final phase of my PhD research I was
given unique access to the new materials recently shipped to the Center:
the manuscripts and other materials from Ray Bradbury's basement
office.

This photo shows just one drawer of one cabinet. There are 31 cabinets, and I browsed every one, checking and annotating the Center's inventory as I went.

There are also dozens and dozens of boxes, but three weeks isn't enough to have looked through those.

I found what I was looking for, and much much more. But every drawer
was a surprise. Just when you think you know the works of Ray Bradbury,
you discover ANOTHER variation on a familiar work. I lost count of the
number of adaptations of DANDELION WINE, and the number of screenplay
versions of THE FOX AND THE FOREST.

Some time in the next
couple of years, these materials will be fully catalogued and made
accessible to researchers, but for now they are in temporary storage. I
am enormously grateful to Prof Jon Eller for allowing me such privileged
access while the materials are still in this state.
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